New SpyWeek: Clayton Squeaks In, Endless Iran War, CIA & Trump's Chinese Election Doc

Also: CIA & Mossad hunting for Khamenei, Trump tracking Comey, Iran hackers in U.S. water systems, best EU spy agencies, local police license-plate spying

The best European spy agencies? L’Express did a poll. See below.

Headhunters: Mossad and the CIA are “obsessed” with hunting down and killing Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. So says The Times of London.

Panetta on Iran War: The U.S. is locked into an “unwinnable war” with Iran that has no clear end, former CIA Director (and SecDef) Leon Panetta said. He compared the ongoing military operation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Hill)

Eviction Notice: Acting DNI Bill Pulte is reportedly resigned to vacating his office, reports Politico. Pulte had asked Trump “to delay Clayton’s swearing-in, or at least [let him] stay in the job longer,” a White House official told Politico earlier in the week, “arguing his mission of majorly reshaping the agency had not yet come to a close.” Last week Pulte boasted about “executing a 5th and Near Final Round of TERMINATIONS” at ODNI, “an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.” Jay Clayton, whose DNI nomination was finally confirmed by the Senate after a contentious hearing that raised troubling questions about his fealty to Trump over the law, is planning to move in Monday.

CIA Doc Doctors?: Hundreds of ex-CIA officials have “called for investigations into whether the White House helped the CIA draft a document to boost the president’s claims that China interfered in the 2020 elections.” The group, issuing a statement under the banner of The Steady State, an organization of over 400 former national security officials, “fears the document may have been manufactured from ‘cherry-picked’ CIA reports with direct input from the White House before the president’s primetime address on what he called ‘shocking vulnerabilities’ in the nation’s election system.” The group said the CIA note cited by the White House “includes ‘a number of anomalies’ that don’t identify the office, author, context or definitive conclusion based on the agency’s information, among other issues.” It “also departs from ‘typical’ CIA style and format,” according to the group’s letter, “which was sent to congressional intelligence committees and the inspectors general for the CIA and intelligence community.”(The Independent)

8647 or Fight: The Secret Service “knowingly conducted illegal electronic surveillance” of James Comey, lawyers for the former FBI director say, at the urging of high level Trump administration officials, including the president himself. Comey’s phone was tracked as he and his wife drove north on I-95, but “agents lost contact when the Comeys stopped to visit the cemetery where their son is buried, his attorneys say.” (CNN and CNBC)

Iran Mole: A dual British and Azerbaijani citizen by the name of Rashad Sultanov was “arrested after accusations he surveilled” an important U.K. military base in Cyprus that is “a hub for Mideast operations, and shared the details with the Revolutionary Guards.” (New York Times)

Iran Moles 2: Iranian hackers are suspected as responsible for infiltrating the control systems of water systems in a spreading number of midwestern states. A joint alert from the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday “warned that ‘malicious cyber actors’ have been remotely tampering with…several water and energy systems across the country since shortly after the Iran war began on Feb. 28,” reported The Washington Post. More: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “has for months been warning the public that Iran may seek to compromise water utilities and other critical infrastructure,” reported the New York Times. Trump blamed the Minnesota attacks on…Minnesota.

Don’t miss our fascinating conversation with Bojan Pancevski, author of “The Nord Stream Conspiracy,” on the SpyTalk podcast here, or wherever your preferred platform. And do leave us your comments.

China Mole: The Canadian woman of Chinese origin being held in Belgium on suspicion of spying for an unidentified “third country” inside NATO’s military command was was “vetted” and “cleared” by multiple Canadian security services—”despite a finding by Canada’s public service watchdog that she committed fraud in a hiring competition …” (The Bureau)

Chinese Eyes On: A local police force has been discovered expanding its already ubiquitous facial recognition system onto foreigners. (New York Times

U.S. Eyes On: A local police chief in Georgia who was accused of using Flock, a license plate monitoring system, to keep track of his ex-girlfriend’s movements, committed suicide before he could be brought to trial, The Washington Post reported Sunday “Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.” The company told the Post “that its more than 120,000 shoebox-size cameras now scan the roads of more than 6,000 communities and record 20 billion plate scans a month.” Some Massachusetts towns are pushing back, reported the Boston Globe.

Best European Spooks? The French newspaper L’Express spoke to “60 intelligence professionals” from the CIA, MI6, Mossad, Ukraine’s SBU and more—to build “an exclusive ranking of Europe’s best spy agencies.” How’d they fare?
1.MI6 (UK)
2. DGSE (France)
3. AIVD (Netherlands)

Go you Dutch!